“Will you guys shut the fuck up! You’ve already ruined my breakfast!” yelled Preston. “I can’t believe I’ve been reduced to associating with you people. I have a Ph.D., for Chrissakes!”
“What are you saying? Because I have only one arm, I’m stupid, too?”
“I’m just saying it’s the same shit every night. Frankie starts up with
Bruno Litsky came back to the table.
“How was it?”
“Like a goddamn wake,” said Bruno. “Cigarette me.”
“Frankie, you’re up.”
Frankie went down the hall and climbed onstage for his hand-shadow rendition of
A gaggle of young girls entered the restaurant.
“Hey, Preston,” said Andy. “Isn’t that girl on the end the one you had onstage tonight?”
Preston turned around. “So it is.”
He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled across the diner:
The girls turned around. One of them began shrieking. She ran over to the corner booth and begged Preston for his autograph again.
Preston stood up and put his arm around Jessica’s shoulder. “I think that can be arranged. Let’s go back to my suite.”
He winked at the other guys as he led her away from the table, toward the men’s room.
Bruno shook his head.
“What’s the matter with you?” asked Spider.
“There’s a line you don’t cross,” said Bruno, pointing at Preston and the teenager. “That’s just not right.”
“It’s not right because you’re not getting it,” said Spider.
“Speak for yourself,” said Bruno.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“What does what mean?”
“Oh, I know what you’re thinking. ‘He’s only got one arm — I’ll bet he doesn’t get any.’”
Preston held the men’s room door for Jessica. Nobody inside except one guy playing a slot machine over a urinal.
“Wow!” she said. “I’ve never been in a presidential suite before. This must cost a fortune!”
Preston pushed open a stall. “Let me show you the bedroom….”
The first pregnancy — and again, this is all inexact science — came during his junior year in college. Preston was working on his undergrad in abnormal psych when he became fascinated by the subject of hypnosis. He soon learned the technique itself really wasn’t that difficult; the trick was finding the right personality type, someone in the twenty percent that researchers had identified as highly susceptible to mesmerization.
He walked around the lobby of his dorm approaching women, swinging a pocket watch. “You are getting sleepy.”
“What the hell are you doing?”
“This is for a class project.”
“Get away from me, you pig! I’m studying!”
Preston went to the next woman.
“Get lost!”
To his benefit, Preston couldn’t take a hint. He figured it was all in the numbers. He waited until a party, when everyone had been drinking. The first woman laughed but let him try anyway. She went under quickly. Preston led her to his room. He swung the pocket watch again. “You want to have sex with me.”
Even under hypnosis, the woman laughed.
It happened three more times at the party, three different laughing women. Preston had hit a wall, the so-called Svengali effect. He couldn’t get them to do something under hypnosis that was against their nature in real life, and having sex with someone like Preston was against the universal nature of women everywhere.
Preston thought about it and read his textbooks. Something in the espionage chapter caught his eye, the way the CIA and KGB liked to turn the tables during hypnotic interrogations, making the subject believe they’re from the other side in order to uncover double agents. Preston decided to tinker with the scenario.
The next party. A woman was in his room. A watch swung. “I’m Richard Gere.”
Bingo.
Preston couldn’t believe the amount, quality and unusualness of the sex he started getting.
Two months later, back in his room. “I am Robert Redford—”
A knock at the door.
“Go away.”
More knocks.
“I said, go away! I’m doing homework!”
“It’s me, Becky. I have to talk to you. It’s an emergency.”
“Damn it!”
Preston opened the door a crack.
“I’m pregnant.”
“You can’t be.”
“I am.”
“It wasn’t me.”
“Yes, it was.”
“Your word against mine. Who knows how much you sleep around?”
“I was a virgin.”
“Trying to trap me in marriage? I know what I’m worth! Don’t think I can’t see through this.”
“I don’t want to get married. I need an abortion. I don’t have any money.”
“Oh, so this is about money! You have sex and now you want me to pay. There’s a name for women like you.”
“I need two hundred dollars.”
“Go to hell!”
He slammed the door.
Becky began calling, and knocking again.
“Stay away from me!”
